


The Man in the Mirror

by romuluswasadick



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Short Story, Writing Exercise, is charles manson technically a serial killer or no?, mention of charles manson, regardless. tw in some way, serial killer tw, shapeshifter lore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-16 21:03:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21277688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romuluswasadick/pseuds/romuluswasadick
Summary: Reid wakes up one morning and finds himself in a rather sticky situation. Why exactly is his skin peeling off?





	The Man in the Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> Another work from my creative writing course. Cannot remember for the life of me what kind of short story this is exactly, might just be a short story in general. Again, feel free to leave feedback for me to improve my writing! Thank you for reading!

When Reid woke up, something felt off. The sheets beneath him felt sticky and to be quite frank, gross. He assumed that maybe the night before he had had a bad dream, so he brushed it off as perhaps sweat and pushed it to the back of his mind. He would simply have to change his sheets once he had brushed his teeth. He carded his hands through his hair, brief confusion flooding his senses. Last he checked, his hair was always a mess when he woke, and now it was straight and smooth. Maybe he was just having a good hair day for the first time in his life. 

Still rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Reid pushed the door of his bathroom open. He turned the sink on haphazardly and blinked up at his sleepy reflection. He thought his reflection looked a little off, but pushed it from his mind as he grabbed his toothbrush and squeezed the bare minimum of toothpaste on it and set to brushing his teeth. One hand holding the corner of the counter, with most of his weight on that anchor point, he leaned slightly to that direction. He stared into the sink while he mechanically brushed his teeth and once he stood back up after rinsing his mouth, he looked himself in the mirror with focus. But he-it? - wasn't himself.

It was someone who was significantly tanner than him, and weighed evidently more than him. His sunken eyes and cheeks were gone, and so was the long, thin, brown hair he had grown so used to. Reid was beyond different than what he had been just hours before. Now that he had seen his- nay, this… strange person's- reflection, he thought back to the sticky mess he woke up in. He turned on his heel, walking swiftly to his bedroom with the mission of finding out what exactly he had woken up in. He pushed the door open and stepped in, looking at the bed from the doorframe. There was a red and pale cream colored mess on top of his sheets. He took a few steps closer, now wanting to desperately know what he had woken up in. 

Upon testing the waters and poking at it with his fingers, he discovered that it was indeed still very sticky and very gross-feeling in general. He sat on the edge of his bed, pulling at it. There appeared to be a lump in it and he grabbed for it, pulling it towards him. What he pulled from the mess was something he hoped dearly he was hallucinating. In his hand was an ear, with skin still connected to the edges and even some hairs. Some long, brown, thin hairs; much like Reid's used to be. 

Reid quickly began digging through the pile of what must all be skin. As he pulled at the skin he found part of a face- his face?- and even a piece of skin that had the very same butterfly tattoo he had on his bicep. But now it was in a pile of bloody and disembodied skin on his bed. And he looked significantly different than he had when he had gone to sleep. But how had this even happened? People don't just up and shed all of their skin in a mess on their bed while they're sleeping. Maybe it was an aging thing. Reid didn't know what had happened, but he did know that something must have caused this because it had never happened before.

Did he roll too much while he was sleeping? Maybe he had an itch and his unconscious mind didn't know when to stop itching and just ripped all of his skin off. But that still wouldn't explain why he was an entirely new person under all of this. Part of him just wanted to joke about what had caused this all. Maybe it was the bad book he read the other day. Maybe it was the bad Thai food he ate the night before. Anything could have caused it, but for some reason a part of him felt stuck on the bad Thai food. 

Now Reid was curious; if he had just simply shed his skin so easily during the night maybe he could now too. He didn't know how it happened though. Did he have to just pull at his skin until it disconnected? That was his best guess, so he walked back to his bathroom; he was curious about how this all looked too. He began tugging at the skin by his ear, thinking back to the ear and surrounding skin and hair he had found just moments earlier. 

It gave way almost like a band-aid would have, but without the pain. Part of it stuck a bit, but when he pulled it away there was new skin underneath. This skin was incredibly pale, and there appeared to be no residue from the red, jelly-like substance that was on the underside of the skin he was currently peeling off of him. Before he knew it, he had begun pulling away more of his skin. He was curious to see what the person underneath the one he had woken up as looked like. So he kept peeling away the skin, becoming more and more curious with each bit of skin that came off.   
When he finally pulled the last bit of the skin off, he saw two identical tattoos on his forearms. They were both of a woman's face, devoid of much detail. He looked in the mirror next; the first thing he noticed was the swastika on his forehead. He looked down from the tattoo to the rest of his face, eyes wide. He was Charles Manson.


End file.
